Le Pen was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party’s electoral support has grown in recent years.

Prosecutors also requested a guilty verdict for all other co-defendants, including various sentences of up to one year in prison and a €2 million fine for the party.

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Prosecutor Louise Neyton said the judicial investigation has shown that the alleged fraudulent acts “are unprecedented because of their scope, duration and because of their organised, automatic and systemic nature.” She denounced “the serious and lasting damage these facts and this behaviour have caused to the democratic game.”

Le Pen has focused all her energy in recent weeks fighting what she claims are unfair accusations.

From the outset of the long and complex trial, she has been a forceful presence, sitting in the front row, staying for long hours into the night and expressing her irritation at allegations she says are wrong.

A lawyer by training, she follows the proceedings with extreme attention, sometimes puffing her cheeks. She makes her disagreement known with forceful nods of the head and strides over to consult her lawyers, her heels loudly clicking on the courtroom’s wooden floors.

Le Pen has denied accusations she was at the head of “a system” meant to siphon off EU parliament money to the benefit of her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021. Speaking in court last week, she instead argued the missions of the aides were to be adapted to the MEPs’ various activities, including some highly political missions related to the party.

Parliamentary aide “is a status,” she said. “It says nothing about the job, nothing about the work required, from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphic designer, from the bodyguard to the MEP’s office employee.”

Le Pen’s co-defendants – most of whom owe her their political or professional careers – testified under her close watch.

Some of the aides provided embarrassed and confused explanations, faced with the lack of evidence their work was in relation to the EU parliament.

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Often, they could hear her bringing precisions or rectifications even when it wasn’t her turn to address the court. Sometimes, she would punctuate a point they made with a loud “voilà” (“that’s it”).

Le Pen insisted the party “never had the slightest remonstrance from the Parliament” until a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European body, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of EU funds by members of the National Front.

“Let’s go back in time. The rules either didn’t exist or were much more flexible,” she said.

Le Pen feared the court would draw wrong conclusions from the party’s ordinary practices she said were legitimate. “It’s unfair,” she repeated. “When one is convinced that tomato means cocaine, the whole grocery list becomes suspicious!”

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The president of the court, Benedicte de Perthuis, said no matter what political issues may be at stake, the court was to stick to a legal reasoning.

“In the end, the only question that matters … is to determine, based on the body of evidence, whether parliamentary aides worked for the MEP they were attached to or for the National Rally,” de Perthuis said.

Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer for the European parliament, said the cost of the suspected embezzlement is estimated to €4.5 million. “In the past few weeks, it has appeared very clearly that the fraud is, I think, largely established,” he told reporters.

AP